What makes it feminist?

A literary review of contemporary/interdisciplinary research and creative practices that are feminist in nature through explorations of female sexuality and patriarchy

Eleanor Kipping

“An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.” Nina Simone

Abstract

Through a literary review of critique, interviews, journals and articles, this literary review aims to identify reoccurring instances of successful feminist research and creative practice(s) that might provide insight to the ways in which critiques approach film and gender studies. Through understanding “what works” critics might be able to recognize works that are feminist and those that are not. It is also to point out that a deeper understanding of popular culture and mass media would be gained through a deeper understanding of the avant-garde and experimental that is often found in the contemporary Art world.

An introduction

To properly provide a feminist critique, on say film and visual media, art or popular culture, one must understand what lie at the core of a feminist practice, beyond theory and methodology. While thorough consideration of pages upon pages on feminist methodology and critique will indeed be of service in one’s feminist endeavors, one must also seek to understand the works of those feminist practices that are successfully at play in the experimental, the avant-garde, and interdisciplinary Art and Academic fields. The idea of Art with a capital A has been known to cause eyes to roll and can clear a room like a fart on a hot day in an over-crowded classroom with no air conditioning. Unfortunately, the snobbish and arrogant works that claim to consist of conceptual impetus and intellect, cultural criticism, and value has been known to leave a foul taste in many mouths. However, with a sharpened eye and critical approach, there is much to be discovered and appreciated in the avant-garde visual arts.

Composer, philosopher, and experimental artist John Cage, instructs us that “the function of art is not to communicate one’s personal ideas or feelings, but rather to imitate nature in her manner of operations.” Cage then leaves us with his discoveries in his practice of Chance Operations1 and a body of work so profound and beautiful that students of Intermedia, Conceptual, and Contemporary Art drool over him in classrooms and appropriate him in humble performance spaces. Despite his bold and idealist view, one might be so bold to consider challenging him. It is from a place of privilege that Cage instructs. This privilege is not monetary. While Cage had his bouts of financial struggle, he still managed to live a life of creative fortune. He regularly produced creative work and made a living doing so while still finding the time to forage for mushrooms. He achieved the sought-after Hipster-Bohemian American Dream.

Do not grow weary. This paper is not to put down the benevolent and ground-breaking Cage. Instead, to call out those that disparage the significance of academic and creative works that probe and write the arts off as something to explore with the eyes of a blissful child at play. While there is arguable significance to that approach, there are other works that ought to be supported. Specifically, those works that push against the patriarchy by boldly pointing out the chasms between the depictions of sexuality, morals, and gender, what is expected of us, and the institutions and structures that keep them in place. The fact that Cage inculcated that art was merely play as a celebration of life rather than as having a place for criticism and as a catalyst for change is why the significant feminist works that exists in the contemporary art world are so significant. There mere existence is radical. In the poetic naivety of Cage’s instruction, we miss what so many feminist artists bring to the table. While they do reflect life as it is, they do not celebrate it as suggested. Instead through criticism and creative practice they loudly point out the gaping holes of oppression, repression and marginalization suffered by the female body. There is no time for Chance Operations if it should be at the expense of freedom and equality.

Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum? 1989, Screenprint on paper on paper, 280 x 710 mm

Intermedia, Conceptual Art and Feminism.

Ken Friedman sings the praises of Dick Higgins, with his contribution to FLUXIST and SILENCE Celebrate Dick Higgins. Higgins’ experimental approach paved the foundation upon which contemporary and conceptual art today stands.

Friedman writes, “Higgins coined the term “intermedia” in the mid-sixties to describe the tendency of an increasing number of the most interesting artists to cross the boundaries of recognized media or to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered art forms (Friedman para 6).”

INTERMEDIA is not new media, nor is it multi-media. An intermedial practice does not merely adhere various mediums upon a canvas of choice to create a multi-sensory/tactical collage. Instead, it blurs the lines between known forms, with known histories, and thereby produces its own basis through the employment of the technical, material, methodological processes of previously defined disciplines. An intermedial practice thereby by exists at the intersection of disciplines while producing is own. In the words of Higgins, “This is the intermedia approach, to emphasize the dialect between the media. A composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world (Higgins para 4).”

With intermedia and the influence of The Happenings and Fluxus movements, quickly followed by the Civil Rights movement, came a rise in the practice and visibility of CONCEPTUAL ART. In such practice, concept, theory, and message take precedence over creative decisions regarding material, method, and technique, thus producing works that became intermedial in nature and practice.

In her 2003 publication of “Feminist Politics: Where We Stand”, bell hooks aimed to unify the public’s definition of FEMINISM. She opens the article with, “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism.” She goes on to explain and counter-argue the stance that to be feminism is to be anti-male. She rights this wrong by making it clear that the “male” is not what creates the need for “feminism” but it is sexism.

“Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition, it is open-ended. To understand feminism, it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism (hooks para 1).”

It is here, at this intersection of conceptual approach, interdisciplinary practice, and feminist theory that the feminist artist and critique must approach the Art World, society and other creative works as they explore female sexuality, gender discrimination, and make a demand for equality for all genders. The most significant and successful feminist works have continued paving a path for future generations of contemporary and interdisciplinary practitioners to follow, yet leave large and heavy shoes to fill. What makes these works feminist? Surely more than just the sexualized and publicized female nude within the walls of a museum or space designated as gallery or performance. Let us now consider the research and practices of artists who have hit feminism on the nose with their research and work.

Tools: Working with what you’ve got

Tanja Ostojic and Susan E. Cahan: two female artists that exploit the political and social climate of their female gender and geographies to comment on the institution of marriage, ideas of power, and the praxis of fusing performance and life. Angela Angela Dimitrakaki deconstructs a work completed by each of these women in the context of biopolitics and gender in “Labour, Ethics, Sex and Capital: On Biological Production in Contemporary Art” (Sexuality, Jones 167). She does note, for reader clarity, “I do not engage with the technoscientific context of biopolitics in this paper (172).” Instead, Dimitrakaki argues that while capitalism and globalization are not the only forms of biopolitics at play, they are significant to our times and dealing with biopolitics. In the context of this paper, the Greek term for life (bio) is inherently, and often problematically, bound up and defined by the social and cultural politics and power struggles. Today, that namely takes the form of capitalism and globalization.

Dimitrikaki examines Looking for a Husband with EU Passport, a work completed by female Yugoslovanian artist Tanja Ostojic, in which the artist places a personal ad on the Internet. The ad depicts her in full-frontal shaven nudity and requests that interested men with an EU passport contact her at hottanja@hotmail.com. The artist received responses, and marries one of them, also an artist. She then publicly pursued EU passport of her own. The piece lasted for years and was entwined between public spectacle and her personal life. The response to the piece was of disapproval. Ostonjic was accused of “manipulating” her subject, her husband, ignoring the fact that he a consenting participant. Ironically it was mostly curators and art critics – those with the power and task to manipulate, who took this stance against Ostonjic.

Andra Fraser, Untitled 2003, is as equally provocative. Fraser, entered into an agreement in which for the promise of buying a video, an art collector agreed to have sex with Fraser while being recorded on video. The art, the labor, the actual act of organizing and fulfilling the exchange, was documented. Five copies of the video were produced. The actual artifact, the video, was sold to the collector and fellow laborer at an undisclosed price. The piece raised questions on the relationship between monetary value and the female body and the price tag of her sexuality, the specific female body being Andra Fraser. As well as issues of sex labor, voyeurism, human interaction and product.

Dimitrikaki cites Susen E. Cahan in Social Semiotics, in which Cahan notes, “The social relation between Fraser and the collector is the work of art. Moreover, the collector as a participant in the creation of the work as the resulting piece is both his and the artist’s ‘labour’. The piece does more than merely use prostitution as a metaphor for the artist/collector relationship, it embodies a form of resistance to commodity fetishism and a reinvestment in the power of human connection (Dimitrikaki qtd. 170)”

Looking for a Husband with EU Passport does much of the same. Ostojic resists the post- communist Yugoslovia through manipulating a system that was set in place to control and oppress women while preserving patriarchy, to her own end. She points out the flaws in the biopolitical system through using it to her advantage. The irony is lost on her critiques.

Curator Meredith Malone introduces audiences to Andrea Fraser’s work in her thoughtful and colorful insights on Fraser’s work and approach in “What do I as an artist, provide?” Fraser’s performance art is known for its institutional critique of, and simultaneous participation in the Art world. Malone’s introduction explores some of the works of Fraser and aims to make clear that Fraser does not aim to dismantle the institution, but point out the defaults in an attempt to preserve it, very much like previously mentioned Tanja Ostojic. Malone notes Fraser’s response to the art world as Fraser adapts to the changes of deliverables and museum trends in an attempt to critique the institutions that are set in place to support artists yet do harm in that they thrive off of consumerism. Fraser appropriates, mimics, and responds to relationships in the art world to comment on the relationships in the art world. For example, Fraser’s Official Welcome renders Fraser nude in front of an audience in her bra and underwear in a comedic yet disturbing imitation of artists, including Vanessa Beecroft2 and other to explores the relationship between artists and their supporters.

“If you want to transform relations,” Malone proposes in quoting Fraser, “the only chance you have is to intervene in those relations in their enactment, as they are produced and reproduced. In her recent works, the artist walks a rather precarious line between resistance and participation, holding this contradiction at play and thus making it a key part of her work (Malone qtd. 16).”

The Female Experience

In the Making’s Linda Weintraub does an excellent job of exploring the practices, and approaches of dozens of artists in light of creative options for contemporary artists. She vignettes the work of Vanessa Beecroft, Jan Harrison, Nan Goldin, Matthew Barney among others.

Despite the controversy surrounding her work, Vanessa Beecroft’s work is another example of institutional and patriarchal commentary. Through the act of exploitation, Beecroft explores exploitation, power, and gender. Her performance installations employ the image of nude women and require endurance and spectacle on their behalf as they are often on display in museums in front of gawking and mingling audiences and artist/gallery patrons for hours at a time. Weintraub writes, “...Beecroft commits the kind of exploitative acts on women that have, for the last thirty- odd years, provoked the ire of several generations of feminists (Weintraub 24).” Instead of working in poetic metaphor, Beecroft works in vivid depictions. It is here, in her bold representation of the female experience that she shares her own unattractive truth and the truth of all women.

Pipilotti Rist also shares her feminine narrative in an attempt to raise discussion on the female experience. Rist’s video installations, often self-produced with her as the subject, are sexual in content and comment on the close relationship between feminine sexuality and nature. Weintraub describes this as her “fantasy-laden approach to womanhood” and “designates Mother Nature as her complementary role model (136). Rist utilizes contemporary technology and contemporary aesthetics to express an age-old form of female frustration (139).”

A 1988 interview with Carolee Schneemann, published in Art Into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents, looks into performance artist Scheneemann’s controversial and pornographic film Fuses and the role of her body, personal life, and views on her work and performance art. She notes that there is a range in the reception of performance art by artists to varying degrees in exploring the personal experience surrounding those who identify as Gay, Lesbian, Black, Asian, and Female (39). Controversial for its time, the film is now esteemed as an exotic classic. Fuses, both portrays Scheneeman in an explicit sexual intercourse, but was also the director of the film. Its visuals are warm and abstract, and almost seem to undulate in the act of sex themselves in their warm colors and wet textures. The few recognizable images seen are reflective of historical femininity, yet feel domestic and safe when juxtaposed with images of a cat and home. Carolee discusses her own narrative and influence of dreams in consideration of the development of Fuses, and her body of work as a whole. She considers herself to be a painter, and her films and installations paintings.

Rist, Beecroft, and Schneemann also employ the tools of patriarchy in an attempt to comment upon and transform the patriarchy through vivid self-directed depictions of emotion, the female body while also being intentional in the allowing their personal experience and perspective to guide them. They thereby challenge the male-gaze as the status quo.

Exploring the Masculine

“The creation and exposure of various zones of ambivalence and liminality is the true calling of all trickers (Lipovetsky, sec. 4).” These are the words of Mark Lipovetsky in “Pussy Riot as Trickster.” Lipovetsky provides us with a look into the historically masculine trickster as a literary trope and creative architype in consideration of performance through the lens of gender politics in post-Soviet Russia. The trickster aims to expose the toxic dissonance within social and political realms through trickery, humor, warmth, play, and irony.

Referring to Hungarian scholar Karl Kerényi, Lipovetsky writes, “However, in the same volume Karl Kerényi (1972: 185) first brings up the cultural importance of the trickster’s ambivalence: Disorder belongs to the totality of life, and the spirit of this disorder is trickster. His function in an archaic society, or rather the function of his mythology, of the tales told about him, is to add disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, and experience of what is not permitted (Lipovetsky sec. 1).”

Black Arts

Revisiting Linda Weintraub (In the Making) we are introduced to Isaac Julien. Julien’s pornographic film and video installations reflect historical paintings of colonial conquest and conquer. They also exploit homophobia, fantasy, social taboos, and power relationships surrounding gender, and society. Weintraub writes, “According to Julien, there are two categories of black males in the collective thought of most British people: self-effacing, castrated “Uncle Tom” and the boastful, aggressive “supersede (27).”

Again, we find an example of personal exposure and rebellious refusal of self-silencing. Julien’s work explores his own experience as a black homosexual male. His work also touches on the idea of double-consciousness familiar to those who identify as “other.” The expectations of masculinity and sexuality within the black community in consideration of racism touches on the relationship between black sexually and racism, black-sexuality-phobia, generational oppression, and self-silencing.

Julien continues, “blacks fit into this terrain by being confined to a narrow repertoire of types –– the super-sexual stud and the sexual savage on one hand, or the delicate, fragile, and exotic oriental on the other. These are the lenses through which black men become visible in the urban gay subculture (qtd. 27).”

Self-silencing is an important conversation within black feminism study. Evelyn Higginbotham examines the cause for the history of black female sexuality not being a readily studied and archived. She examines the attempt made by black women to redeem perceptions of themselves and their sexuality to their white-counter parts. This was essentially practiced through

Lipovestky applies this view with a look at Pussy Riots radical performance of Punk Prayer in a Russian church that placed them in jail for hooliganism and religious hatred. Again, we see the use of creative prowess to demonstrate the social and cultural dissonance in the system that aims to keep humans at bay. Here we potentially find transformation through trickery.

assimilation and self-silencing. (“Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence” published in Feminist Theory and the Body: A Feminist Reader (93- 102). This has had negative generational impact on the representation of black sexuality. It may have served blacks for a limited period of time, has actually only solidified dominate standards and instilled the harmful practice of self-silencing within the black community: an undermining of the black sexual experience. Higginbotham mentions Venus Hootentot and draws ties between the colonialism and sexual-tourism that paved the road for the idealized standard of whiteness and femininity, and the exoticism and primal view of black sexuality and femininity.

Mass Media, the Main Stream and Film

“‘It Gets Better’ as a Teleological Prophecy: A Universal Promise of Progress through Assimilation” examines the use of video and media in a YouTube generation. Author Brett Krutzsch heavily criticizes the dangers of an Internet video campaign that was launched in 2010 in response to the increase in queer suicide rates. The campaign promised young teens that their lives were to get better through testimonies offered by gay individuals who suffered bullying in their youth. The problem, presented by Krutzsh, is in the fact that there was no explanation as to how it gets better. Through a little critical research and observation, it becomes clear that the It Gets Better poster children all had to leave their homes, denounce their religion, and transplant themselves into a new urban queer community. They also all found new homosexual partners, and in a bliss of love and romance forgot about their painful past as “other.” The campaign problematizes the lack of inclusion of sexuality in a religious and spiritual context. It does problematize “small-town thinking” and intolerance, nor does it call out the behavior and dangers impacts of bullying. Instead it presents homosexuals as victims that ought to endure their pain and marginalization until they can essentially self-segregate themselves for their own good.

“The “it gets better” line is an evocative and hopeful promise, but it announces a dubious progress narrative. The campaign promulgates a homonormative set of instructions that includes urban migration, social mobility, romantic relationships, and general mimicry of white, Protestant, American heterosexuals. In this regard, It Gets Better offers hope through assimilation, taking particularities from the white gay male experience and making them universal,” concludes Krutzch.

This narrative is presented not just in this format but is perpetuated in popular films that promote these ideas: Brokeback Mountain, Modern Family, The Birdcage, Orange is the New Black, The L Word, Glee, Blue is the Warmest Color. While not all necessarily have a ‘happy ending’ and in some cases these pieces depict accurate homosexual experiences and narratives, all present ideals in the same vein as It Gets Better, through a white male heteronormative prescription. Those that do not fit the bill, do not make the cut, and things do not get better.

Dubious white male film director Lars von Trier has been both criticized and praised in the same sentence. Writer Lindsay Zoladz’s consideration, regarding von Trier’s film Melancholia: “James Joyce once remarked, I am the foolish author of a wise book. Perhaps von Trier is the misogynist author of a feminist film (Marso qtd, 1).” As a filmmaker, von Trier has embarked on a journey and explicit exploration and depiction of female and human sexuality.

Peter Schepelern’s article “Forget about Love: Sex and Detachment in Lars von Trier’s ‘Nymphomaniac’,” presents an excellent analysis of Von Trier’s technical execution of his films Nymphomaniac (Vol I. and Vol II.). However, his critical eye still sports at least one white patriarchal lens, a monocle perhaps. Schepelern opens with a choice of revealing vocabulary. He argues, “sexuality as a theme has left its trace in Lars von Trier’s work in often distorted and perverse forms. In the realm of bad sex, Trier may well deserve the status of the Boss of It All (1).” On the contrary, Von Trier’s work may actually present the notion that no sexuality is bad. Schepelern misses this potential point and reveals, perhaps accidently that because he may not engage in the type of sex depicted on von Trier’s screen, it is bad. It might even be important to consider Schepelern’s notions of gender in his conclusions. While Nymphomaniac’s lead Joe is well-versed in detached sex there is actually very little indication that it is bad sex. Is it ironic that it takes detached female-beneficial sex for a “woke” Schepelern to write it off as bad? There are literally countless depictions of detached male-beneficial sex on screen at any given time. Why did it take Nymphomanic’s Joe’s sex for Schepelern to designate a certain depiction of sex as bad?

On the other hand, he is on point in his analysis of Von Trier’s technical execution of Nymphomaniac with great attention to technical detail. Schepelern notes von Trier’s parallel depictions of sexuality and nature, violence and pleasure, and fantasy and the imaginary object, reality and even comedy. He explores the lead character’s grief, lack of human connection, and pursuit of pleasure through sex and pain. Schepelern also wisely notes the potential variation in reads of Nymphomaniac’s lead Joe, and von Trier’s view of women.

Lori J. Marso asks “Must We Burn Lars von Trier? Simone de Beauvoir’s Body Politics in ‘Antichrist’.” Her in depth musings not only critique von Trier’s works but does so in consideration of his Depression Trilogy which include films Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac Vol I. and Vol. II, in consideration of Simone de Beauvoir’s Must We Burn Sade, published in Les Temps Modernes in 1952. Marso’s work offers a careful cross-analysis of the imagery, language and character portrayal at play in von Trier’s trilogy to provide an exploration of femininity in light of patriarchy.

She writes, “While Beauvoir accumulates a multitude of women’s experiences to force us to see the “truth” of women’s lives beyond the myth of “Woman,” von Trier goes even further in seeking to completely shatter expectations of what is normal. He unapologetically focuses his camera on women’s intense experiences of pain, grief, anger, cruelty, melancholy, violence, depression, pleasure, humor and ecstasy. If he is seen as himself a misogynist that is because his refusal is to look away from or remediate such feelings, his commitment to record and explore them, is mistakable for patriarchal pleasure rather than as a critique of patriarchy effects (Marso).”

In our most main stream example yet, we see several parallels between von Trier’s work and the work of those in the experimental practice of art. Von Trier’s work explicit and even grotesque imagery is an attempt to share feminine truth. He shatters what is expected and uses the male gaze through sexualized imagery to challenge and comment on the male gaze. His characters refuse to self-silence and when they do, audiences experience their pain, torment and oppression.

Conclusion

In summary, while all of the works, critiques, and readings discussed vary in discipline and method, there are several basic consistencies in successful feminist approach that offers considerations that ought to be had in a creative feminist critique.

There is an undeniable reality that successful feminist study and practice asks us to be weary of our subject’s experience. All of the works discussed are based on truth and experience. It is of the upmost important that feminist research and study not fail to recognize the truth of the female experience while also considering the power between subject and object in this line of research. There must also be radical inclusivity and intersectionality. Gender, race, physical and mental ability, and sexual orientation all contribute to the experience and practice of oppression and marginalization. Those that explore feminism through their own experiences, stand in the position of both and offer us a unique perspective of conscienceless through marginalization and oppression while demonstrating the importance of familiarity and empathy.

In addition to feminist study and creative works, feminist works must be resistant to self- silencing. Protest hinges on the refusal to remain complacent. These works are not only reflective of women’s truth and mass mythology, but they are resistant to contentedness. There are personal truths and risky self-exposure (exposure of truth) in each of these pieces. While artists and academics must also be self-preserving and practice balance in this willingness and ability to share their truths, when done correctly and combined with social and cultural mythology, feminist works can reach new levels of significance.

Third, in a thorough feminist critique, consideration of tools and methods employed in creative fields is as equally important as content. This is demonstrated in the works of the experimental and avant-garde. Nearly all of the works reviewed here are regarded with respect in their own fields, yet do not resonate with popular culture and main stream audiences Those that do, are resisted by the Art world and academics. The experimental resists the dominant structure of media creation and delivery. However, this may take the form of exploiting the dominant structure of media creation and delivery with a feminist and rebellious means to an end. All of the pieces mentioned here regarded as successful works exploit the tools of patriarchy to reveal the exploitation practiced by the patriarchy. They are radical in their very nature. This content mirrors the popular and sometimes takes the form of the erotic and explicit depictions of sexuality, exaggeration, distortion, concrete poetics and metaphor. In fact, it often does, but it’s structure and commentary is what sets it apart.

Contemporary works and academic prowess must also stand on historical foundations. Academics and creatives do not enter into their fields unawares of their disciplines histories. Too often young students claim to have discovered and/or created something new and are completely

unaware of what paved the road before them. Language can become richer and more expressive and inclusive of what created it. New forms cannot be created if that which is being transformed is not understood.

Lastly, it is also demonstrated in these readings that mass media message and representation ought to be considered as well. To that end: one must question in their critique, who benefits and be careful not to be duped by “feel good’ messages and technical visual trickery that appeals to emotions while dismissing the root of the problem. Stuart Hall demonstrates, “Popular culture is neither, in a ‘pure’ sense, the popular traditions of resistance to these processes; nor is it the forms which are superimposed on and over them. It is the ground on which the transformations are worked (Samuel 443).” It is within the realm of tradition, resistance and acceptance that social and cultural negotiations take place.

While these are not “text-book” methodologies, they provide great insight into feminist theory and practice that can be applied to film, and visual creative study, critique and analysis.

2Vanessa Beecroft is a highly successful yet criticized artist. Through the use of the female body in performance and photo, she explores the objectification and hypersexualization of the female form. She also dangerously treads the line of colonialism, black objectification, and exploitation in her hybrid works and unfortunately misses grand opportunities to connect to the communities that she probes and claims to connect with. These blurred lines lead to attention, yet simultaneously provide critique on the world providing the critique. See film: The Art Start and the Sudanese Twins.